Foldable stowable roof tops are commonly used in sport-utility vehicles for recreational purposes. The foldable roof is typically moved between a stowed position, and a deployed position. When in the deployed position, the foldable roof protects the occupants of the vehicle from various weather conditions. The foldable roof also includes various sections which are made of a clear material to essentially function as a window, allowing the occupant of the vehicle to see outside of the vehicle. It is also sometimes desirable to open these clear window sections when weather conditions are favorable, but the occupant(s) of the vehicle may not desire to change the foldable roof to the stowed position.
Because these window sections are also foldable and/or removable, typical window crank devices and electric motors used for opening and closing a window made of glass (which is rigid and not foldable) are not suitable for use with a foldable roof. Therefore, other methods of opening the foldable window have been developed.
One of these methods is a zipper which is typically one continuous zipper that surrounds all sides of the window but one. The one side of the window which is not surrounded by the zipper is the foldable side, allowing the window to be folded from the closed to the open position. One of the drawbacks to this type of design is that typical zippers are designed for connecting two sheets of material along a substantially straight surface. These zippers are difficult to align and misalignment results in higher zipper effort. In addition, both sides of the zipper are in the same plane and the difference between the radius of the outer window connected to the zipper and the radius of the foldable roof connected to the zipper is typically the width of the zipper. This makes the zipper difficult to use around the corners of the window because there is an imbalanced amount of stress placed on the portion of the zipper connected to the window and the portion of the zipper connected to the foldable roof. Another one of the drawbacks is that the window is not removable, which necessitates clear, foldable, window sections that must be folded and secured out of the way taking up space within the vehicle and can create noise from vibrating in the wind when the vehicle is moving.
Another of these methods for opening the window is employing a removable window. Current soft windows are attached to the soft top via zippers. These prove to be quite cumbersome to use. It is difficult to align the zipper end into the box end of the corresponding zipper on the soft top. Secondly, the zipper can be difficult to close and/or open as the efforts can be quite high due to zipper misalignment between the soft top and window assembly. This is caused by manufacturing issues and/or tolerances such as in alignment during the sewing process that is used to attach the zippers to the soft top and windows. Misalignment can cause the zipper teeth to skip thereby making the zipping motion efforts high. Any variation of the zipper alignment can result in higher zipper efforts around at least the upper rear corner where the curved portion of the window is connectable to the roof resulting in installation difficulty of the window. Another issue from zipper teeth skipping and/or misalignment of zipper halfs is that this can cause the window to not be closed all the way resulting in gaps where water and air can enter the vehicle.
Accordingly, there exists a need for removable windows including zipper less attachments which are suitable for providing a selective connection between a foldable roof and the removable windows having various straight and curved areas.